Laser-induced electron diffraction: inversion of photo-electron spectra for molecular orbital imaging

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we discuss the possibility of imaging molecular orbitals from photoelectron spectra obtained via laser -induced electron diffraction in linear molecules. This is an extension of our recent work to the case of the HOMO-1 orbital of the carbon dioxide molecule. We show that such an imaging technique has the potential to image molecular orbitals at different internuclear distances in a sub-femtosecond time scale and with a resolution of a fraction of an Angström.

KEYWORDS:

• Recollision
• imaging
• photo-electron spectra
• intense fields
• tunnel ionisation
• molecular orbitals

PACS CLASSIFICATION:

• 33.80.-b
• 34.80.Qb
• 34.80.Bm
• 42.50.Hz

Acknowledgment

We thank Misha Ivanov for fruitful discussions. R. Puthumpally-Joseph and E. Charron acknowledge support from the EU (Project ITN - 2010 - 264951, CORINF). We also acknowledge the use of the computing cluster GMPCS of the LUMAT federation (FR 2764 CNRS). We acknowledge CINES, France for providing access and supprot to their computing platform Occigen under project AP010810188. O. Atabek acknowledges the organising committee of the André D. Bandrauk Honorary Symposium on Molecules and Laser Fields in Orford (QC), Canada, May 2016, for giving him the opportunity of an invited talk partly covering the subject of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

EU Seventh Framework Programme [project number ITN - 2010 - 264951].